Microsoft to raise prices for businesses in the UK as Brexit weakens GBP

The Brexit vote has been a political nightmare – it seems it’s turning into a financial one as well. Businesses do not like uncertainty; and nothing about Brexit is certain, except that it’s making people nervous.

In a blog post, Microsoft has said that it would be amending its prices in the UK for its enterprise software and cloud services. Microsoft says this is part of the periodic “harmonization” of local pricing – similar price adjustments were made for the Norwegian krone and Swiss franc in April this year.

From January, the 1st, prices for on-premises enterprise software products are going to increase by 13%, while prices for most enterprise cloud services are going to increase by 22%.

The Department of Defence and the NHS both started using Microsoft services recently. However, the British taxpayers won’t have to take the hit of this price hike just yet – customers with existing contracts are protected from these hikes until they renew their subscriptions.

Microsoft isn’t to blame for this – other technology companies have also started to increase their prices to maintain parity with the rest of the EU.

Apple hiked their hardware prices in September; HTC revised its prices for its Vive VR headset to £759 from £689, and even OnePlus upped the price for its latest OnePlus3 phone by £20.

It is necessary to hike the prices, if these companies want to maintain parity with the rest of Europe – the Euro is stable, while the GBP is not. However, people of the UK are not going to suddenly start earning more – thus these price hikes simply make the products more expensive.

The parity is maintained with the rest of Europe, but not for the citizens of UK. It is a shame, but this uncertainty is to be continued until the British government finally invokes Article 50 and quits the EU – that’s when we will know what the future holds.